When it comes to cooking and baking, there is no shortage of fats and oils. Plants, flowers, seeds, nuts, animal fat, and milk almost all seem to end up as a cooking oil or fat at one point in time or another. And today, a trip down the oil isle makes it clear just how many choices exist. But can they all be used interchangeably? And if not, what do you have to take into consideration?

The answer to the first question is a big no. And to answer the second question, you must take in to consideration four main aspects of a cooking oil or fat: 1. smoking point, 2. flavor, 3. how it interacts with other ingredients, and 4. its nutritional value.

No, you can’t just trade out EVOO for peanut oil and expect the same results on the stove!

The circular bar chart is easy to understand for the audience, and the color gradients make comparisons simple between the different oils and fats. The light colors used in the center arcs make the text hard to read though. Available as small printed posters, this infographic would make a great addition to any kitchen.

R.I.C.E. treatment is an acronym for: rest, ice, compression, elevation. It is commonly used to speed up healing and reduce pain and swelling caused by mild-to-moderate injuries, such as sprains, strains, and bruises.

The design uses a good combination of text explanations, character illustrations, icons and story layout to educate the audience about injury treatment. Short text explanations effectively keep the information consumption quick and easy.

Some of the text is too small when reduced to fit on a blog (like this one), so the design should have included the URL back to the infographic landing page so readers can easily find the full-size original version.

Did you know that your skin is considered an organ? Or that every 28 days the skin renews itself? These fact and more can be found on the 50 Incredible Facts About Skin infographic brought to you by Beautyflash. You can learn general facts about the skin as well as what you need to keep healthy skin.

Good visuals, minimal text, interesting topic and data, clear sources. Good design all around. The footer should have included the URL link directly to the infographic landing page so readers could find the original full-size version.

Galorath Inc. (the SEER Cost, Schedule, Risk Model Developers) watched the healthcare.gov rollout difficulties, the outcries and finger pointing and decided to take a more analytical look. While it is easy to throw stones at stakeholders, this was a huge IT project and there were bound to be challenges. Could it have gone better? Sure. Were there adequate resources? Seems so. Should testing and quality assurance been more rigorous? Yes, but there didn’t appear to be adequate time. Were the requirements firmed up in advance? That could have been a significant contributor.

Although longer than I usually like for infographic designs, this one tackles a fairly complicated topic and breaks it down nicely. The use of icons and minimal text make this design easy for readers to skim through, but read the details they are interested in.

PBS Frontline has published the interactive data visualization, NFL Concussion Watch 2013 to summarize all of the player concussions reported in the NFL.

Every week in the National Football League, a player is sidelined by a head injury. In some cases, their symptoms are clearly visible and they exit the game. Other times, less obvious warning signs can mean a missed diagnosis and a return to the field. Either way, research indicates that the long-term health effects of such injuries — including memory loss, depression and even dementia — can pose problems for players long after retirement.

Concussion Watchis an effort to monitor the NFL’s response to the persistent risk of head injury in professional football. To do so, FRONTLINE will track which players are being removed from games after a hit to the head — and which players are not — and keep score of how long they are kept from the field following a concussion.

I really like the idea of this data visualization, but they messed up the visuals. The circle sizes are supposed to change relative to the values, but they’re not correct. The designer chose to make the circles for 1-3 too large in order to fit the numbers inside the circles, and 4-5 are larger but the same size. The choice of aesthetics over accuracy is a common mistake, and creates a false visual to the readers. It’s the wrong choice. Accuracy of the data visualization is more important than any other part of the design.

In visualizations, the design is supposed to visually compare values to create context and understand for the readers. Because some of these circles are larger than their actual values, this creates the impression that most of the football positions have similar risk, instead of clearly highlighting how less risky some positions truly are.

I do like the design layout that places the circles into their correct player positions. Readers can grasp this layout in a fraction of a second, and understand where the riskiest positions are.

Migraines impact an estimated 1 in 7 people across the UK and in total about 610,000 suffer from them chronically. Women are more than twice as likely to be affected as men with 18% of all women affected and 8% of men. Symptoms of migraines include visual disturbances to the eyes, intense and throbbing pain on one or both sides of the head, nausea and vomiting, sensitivity to noise, sensitivity to smells and tingling, pins and needles, weakness and/or numbness in limbs.

Migraines are undiagnosed and untreated in at least 50% of patients and less than 50% of migraine sufferers seek medical help. The headaches can be so serve that the World Health Organisation classifies chronic migraines as more disabling than blindness, paraplegia, angina or rheumatoid arthritis but migraines remain the least publically funded of all neurological illnesses when adjusted for economic impact. Severe headaches also leave sufferers at three time’s greater risk of depression than non-sufferers.

This is a long form design, with a lot of detail. Not intended to be digested and understood in only a few seconds, this infographic is meant to be an ongoing information resource. The statistics should have been visualized to make them easier for the readers to understand.

24 hour fitness has created an easy to read flowchart to figure out the best group fitness class for your lifestyle in the infographic Find You Path To Fitness, a decision tree based on your wants.

A recent poll revealed 73 percent 24 Hour Fitness members see results in less than two months of participating in group exercise classes. With the popularity and effectiveness of group exercise, 24 Hour Fitness developed a fun, interactive infographic where readers can find out which group exercise class is the best fit for them, based on preferences and fitness goals. The Find Your Path to Fitness infographic, released today, leads readers through a series of questions and directs them to the group workout they’ll find most beneficial.

Anxiety disorders are the commonest psychiatric illnesses globally. There is no test for anxiety disorders like panic disorder, PTSD,OCD or social anxiety disorder and the diagnosis is based on a good history and examination. The signs and symptoms of anxiety disorders are often missed or explained away. Anxiety disorders are also commonly comorbid with other psychiatric disorders particularly mood disorders.

There is no cure for anxiety disorders but very effective treatments are available with a good evidence base. The treatments for anxiety disorders include medications like benzodiazepines, SSRIs or SNRIs or other new generation antidepressants, atypical antipsychotics, as well as augmentation therapies. Several proven therapies are also efficacious in patients with anxiety disorders. These include cognitive behavior therapy, relaxation training, and prolonged exposure therapy. Yoga and meditation have also demonstrated benefits.

There is a lot of information in this design. It’s all good, but packing this much information into one infographic is a risk. On one hand, all of the major information in included in one place. On the other hand, an infographic this big with this much text will discourage many readers that are looking for a fast and easy explanation. The overall design can be intimidating to readers that are evaluating the amount of time they would need to invest in understand the information before they start reading. Many will leave before reading any of the infographic.

“Slather On That Sunscreen: What You Should Know About Skin Cancer” exposes the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer, explaining the three main types of skin cancer and revealing characteristics and statistics for each. Visually explained in the graphic are the symptoms, causes, prevention, and treatment options for skin cancer. With “Slather on That Sunscreen: What You Should Know About Skin Cancer”, Four Points Dermatology is educating viewers that skin cancer prevention can be nearly effortless, and knowing what signs to look for can be life-saving.

Skin cancer incidence has increased 300% since 1994, and shows no sign of slowing down. This infographic was created to educate and encourage people to seek treatment quickly if suspecting of a skin cancer growth. By creating awareness of what symptoms people should be looking for, Four Points Dermatology hopes that the steadily increasing number in cases of skin cancer can be minimized.

Great visuals. Everything from what the symptoms look like, to the causes and preventions are illustrated in a very comprehensible way.

The pie charts with slices that each have a different radius is pretty, but creates a false visualization that doesn’t match the data. Readers see the area of objects when comparing them, and changing the radius, changes the area of each pie slice. By reducing the radius of the smaller values, the area is actually reduced much lower than the actual values.

If the re-election of Barack Obama as America’s 44th President of the United States means anything, it is that American citizens can expect a little more consistency within their legislation. Among the most notable acts of legislation promised by Obama during both of his campaigns for the Presidency was the concern over America’s health care system.

When our 44th President first earned his chair in leading the nation, he immediately took initiative to put into action a new proposal for health care reform called the Affordable Care Act. And now that he has regained his position, we can count on seeing this initiative furthered in the next 4 years!

But among this 11 year plan was a ton of confusing political jargon, making it easy for Americans to misinterpret how the Act would impact themselves and their nation. So as a duty to our followers and role in the promotion of health, we wanted to create a little bit easier of an explanation of the Affordable Care Act!

This health reform infographic breaks down the Affordable Care Act in an effort to explain how it will affect each and every citizen, from small businesses to large ones, college students to parents, and senior citizens to the young! It’s important that you know about the Affordable Care Act and understand that if we had maintained our status-quo, over 14,000 Americans would lose their health insurance daily!

I think there’s too much text in this design, but it does walk the reader through each year, step by step. The statistics should have been visualized. Big fonts are NOT data visualizations, and I see this done by designers all the time. Big fonts don’t provide any context, and don’t make the numbers any easier for the audience to understand.